BTC Nears ATH, ETFs See $2.4B Inflows In 4 Days | CryptoTownHall

Summary

The Wolf Of All Streets – Crypto Town Hall

Episode: BTC Nears ATH, ETFs See $2.4B Inflows In 4 Days
Host: Scott Melker
Date: October 3, 2025

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Overview

In this energetic Crypto Town Hall episode, Scott Melker and a rotating panel of industry voices deep-dive into Bitcoin’s surge near all-time highs, the explosive inflows into crypto ETFs, and dissect the broader market dynamics. The conversation weaves through technical analysis, ETF approval delays, sector narratives, and even the potential for real-world crypto adoption via iconic (and unlikely) adult entertainment companies. The group debates both the hype and fundamentals – punctuated by sharp wit, memorable analogies, and candid, sometimes irreverent, market commentary.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Bitcoin at $120,555: Market Context and Sentiment

• Current Rally: Melker opens by noting the dramatic turnaround from bearish sentiment the previous week, with Bitcoin up 10% in seven days. He lampoons Citibank’s “bold” price targets, underscoring the palpable bullishness.
  • “Citibank, congratulations on that really bold and very unlikely call that you made.” — Scott (00:52)
• Range Caution: Dave tempers the excitement, framing this as still a range-bound rally:
  • “I didn’t get upset when Bitcoin dropped towards 110 [k] and I’m not going to get excited when Bitcoin goes back to 120 [k].” (02:34)
  • He attributes the move to seasonal portfolio rebalancing and the absence of significant new capital.

2. Seasonality and Market Volatility

• October is historically a key inflow month due to institutional rebalancing.
• Volatility Fuel: Dave highlights a bottoming Bitcoin Volatility Index, warning that ultra-low volatility is “enormous fuel for a rally.”
  • “It bottomed at a level that we haven’t seen since… September 2023 and we all know what happened after that.” (03:57)
• In contrast to equities, spikes in BTC volatility coincide with both crashes and parabolic rallies due to its market maturity.

3. Macro Narratives: Government Dysfunction and Crypto

• The group discusses whether the U.S. government shutdown and fiscal mismanagement are direct drivers for Bitcoin’s rally.
  • “I think it is a bond on the failure of government, and the US Government currently is failing and that's why it's going up.” — Dan (06:09)
  • Dave rebuts, calling this short-term narrative “overblown” and emphasizing the episodic, theatrical nature of shutdowns:
    • “The human cost is real…but from an investment point of view, it’s not really a big deal.” (07:43)
• The panel highlights real-world impacts: delayed payments for military and difficulty accessing government services, but see little near-term effect on major crypto inflows.

4. ETF Approval Delays & Institutional Flows

• Ali details the likely impact of the government shutdown on pending crypto ETF approvals:
  • “With the shutdown… it's gonna delay those 16 crypto ETFs that were set to improve this month.” (08:34)
• SEC Skeleton Crew: Dave confirms, explaining that SEC will have only essential staff, and no significant approvals are likely during a shutdown.
  • “Things like approvals…they're not going to take any action that requires discretion or commentary or review. Nada.” (10:23)
• Asset managers will likely default to direct Bitcoin exposure rather than altcoin ETFs in the interim.

5. Helicopter Money, Speculation, and the Coming Rally

• The panel jokes about recent and future “helicopter money” and its outsized flow into speculative assets:
  • “The two uses of helicopter money that dominated was leisure and speculation… meme stocks and bitcoin went crazy.” — Dave (13:25)
  • Several note with irony that more stimulus or money printing could fuel another round of mania.

6. Stocks, Valuations & Comparisons to the Dot-Com Bubble

• The group pivots to the staggering rise of Nvidia (up $2.5 trillion in market cap in six months), questioning whether this signals a tech bubble:
  • “No time in history has a company increased its market cap two and a half trillion [dollars] in six months.” — Guest (15:02)
• Dave draws analogies to Cisco in 1999–2000, suggesting parts of fintech and AI stocks feel overheated and “January 2000-ish” in sentiment.
• Skepticism is expressed toward fintechs and crypto companies whose valuations are driven more by narrative and announcements than revenue, warning newcomers will get “wrecked.”

7. Meme/Narrative Investing and Market Psychology

• The conversation critiques “narrative-based investing,” and jokes about meme coins:
  • “XRP in my mind is a meme. I’m sorry…it just is in terms of its price action.” — Dave (19:57)
  • Recognition that, while fundamentals matter long term, ignoring the power of a strong narrative can be costly for an investor.

8. Real-World Crypto Adoption: The Pornhub Token Case Study

• Major Segment (24:17 – 41:11):
  The discussion spotlights the adult industry’s move into crypto (specifically Pornhub and the new LOOK token).
  • These brands, cut off from traditional finance due to “brand risk,” may finally force mass crypto adoption for high-risk payments.
  • “If there’s ever been an industry that can use crypto for what it’s designed for… it’s this industry.” — Dustin (29:53)
• Key Quotes:
  • “82 million out of 162 million men are on OnlyFans… the addressable market is massive.” — Gary (27:12)
  • “If they made this token…very possible they’d want to use it as payment, then you might see other people using it.” — Lawyer (25:17)
• They detail how Visa/MasterCard extract enormous fees from “sin” verticals and how blockchain-based payments could capture much of this margin.
• “This [LOOK] could be the largest onboarding event to crypto that we’ll ever see…their total internet traffic is measured in full points.” — Dustin (35:45)
• The group predicts success here could lead gaming, gambling, and other high-risk industries to follow.

9. Tech Adoption, Margins, and Alpha

• The episode closes this segment by framing “edge” and outsized profit opportunities in markets with high legacy fees — like porn, gambling, and gaming.
  • “Every time in history there’s been a situation where technology can eat into those margins, the technology companies that do so perform fabulously well.” — Dave (40:43)
• The significance isn’t lost on the host:
  • “Turns out the crypto actually has a really good use case for fast and cheap payments and freedom. Who knew?” — Scott (37:45)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• The Citibank Banana Call:
  • “Citibank, congratulations on that really bold and very unlikely call that you made.” — Scott, (00:52)
• Volatility Fuel:
  • "If you're trying to sell this thing on a technical basis, I think you're picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.” — Dave, (04:44)
• Regarding Meme Coins:
  • “I'm never going to tell people that you can't make money trading memes. XRP in my mind is a meme.” — Dave, (19:57)
• On New Use Cases:
  • “Turns out the crypto actually has a really good use case for fast and cheap payments and freedom. Who knew?” — Scott, (37:45)
• Adult Industry as Crypto Pioneer:
  • “This leads to… the last and largest onboarding event to crypto that we’ll ever see.” — Dustin, (35:45)
• Alpha Alert:
  • “The alpha [Gary] delivered today may be the most he's ever delivered to this audience.” — Dave, (40:43)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:00–02:34: BTC rally, Citibank targets, market mood
• 02:34–05:26: Technical analysis, portfolio flows, volatility
• 05:39–08:34: Government shutdown, macro narrative, altcoin discussion
• 08:34–12:13: ETF delay implications, SEC operations
• 13:01–14:03: Helicopter money & speculation
• 14:32–19:36: Tech stocks and fintech bubble talk
• 19:36–23:31: Narrative/meme investing, XRP and Chainlink
• 23:40–29:53: Pornhub & adult industry crypto integration deep-dive (LOOK token)
• 29:53–40:43: Payment systems, true adoption use case, future alpha
• 41:11–53:48: AMA with Evadex (Decentralized Exchange) – AI trading, security, onboarding

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Ending Segment: AMA with Evadex (41:11–53:48)

• Quick Overview:

  • Evadex is a mobile-first decentralized exchange fusing user-friendly onboarding, affiliate rewards, and in-app gamification (XP points).
  • They discuss the role of AI in trading: signals, risk alerts, but insist order execution should remain user-controlled.
  • To avoid “crowded trades” in an AI-driven environment, they employ diverse models, venue-level safeguards, and circuit breakers.

• Notable Points:

  • “Regular audits of smart contracts and algorithmic logic combined with third-party reviews show that bots operate as advertised.” — Tim, Evadex CMO (44:09)
  • Evadex’s main trust anchors: non-custody, openness with KPIs and trading history, and accessible interfaces.
  • Beta users are incentivized with double XP before token launch (ends October 6th).

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Conclusion

This lively Town Hall synthesizes emerging crypto narratives: the cyclical nature of Bitcoin booms, the possibility of ETF-driven institutional flows, the reality check on meme-driven investing, and the adult industry’s potentially transformative impact on real-world blockchain adoption. Irreverent, insightful, and loaded with alpha, it encapsulates both the fever pitch and skepticism rippling through crypto markets as BTC approaches new highs.

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For more insights or to catch the full episode, visit The Wolf Of All Streets podcast archive or follow Scott Melker on X.

Transcript

[A]

Everybody and welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Every day here on X at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. A week ago we would have been having a show about how it's all over. Bitcoin was trading below $110,000 a week ago and it was going to zero. And now just a few percentage points away from a new all time high, bitcoin trading at 120,555. Good news. Citibank had some huge predictions yesterday on the prices of our beloved crypto assets. By the end of the year they said 181,000 in 12 months. But yesterday they had a very bold take which was $135,000 bitcoin and $4,500 eth. By the end of the year they made the bold prediction on $4,500 ETH when ETH was $4,400. It's now trading at 4,490. So Citibank, congratulations on that really bold and very unlikely call that you made. But seriously we have a very bullish market obviously. Bitcoin's up 10% in seven days. Ethereum's up 14%, Salon is up 17% all here in October. Dave, what's going on?

[B]

Need to caution people that until it this is basically a still a counter trend or not a counter trend but a inside the range rally and makes perfect sense and there is no evidence that we are ready to get out of this range. I personally think that it will happen as portfolios start being reallocated and new, fresh new money comes in. But this isn't fresh new money, this is still trading. The only thing that happened here is the, to use Mike Alfred's words, the kid analysts and the technical, the technicians got caught wrong footed and got their faces ripped off. But for their they don't tend to put that much money at it. So it doesn't take that much. So it's a relatively low volume rally and it makes sense. I mean nothing has changed. Dollars are still being debased. All other fiat currencies, many, most of them are being debased more in that particular sense Bitcoin is basically just still a play on that. And risk assets are also going up for exact the same reason because people need to put their money someplace. So I'm not nearly as excited as people as people in bitcoin get because it's sort of like I didn't get upset when bitcoin dropped towards 110 and I'm not going to get excited when bitcoin goes back to 120 when we're basically in a range from just below that 110 to just above 120. But that said, the. You can't ignore the seasonality. There's a reason for the seasonality though, and that reason is very important. The reason for the seasonality is October is the month of the year that is the dominant month for portfolio repositioning. As a result, new money tends to come in in October and to some degree November. When that happens, there is no supply to sell to them. And so that is the issue. And bitcoin, with the exception of the year when FTX failed in November, right when there was a cascade of forced selling, Bitcoin has been a major beneficiary because it's. If you listen to Bastian Sinclair who talks about the S curve of adoption or you look at any of the metrics on it doesn't really matter which network. I like hash rate because it's the nicest chart literally ever. It basically tells you that you shouldn't be surprised that adoption is increasing and asset managers can see that. And so there has been more and more allocation this time of year. So nothing is surprising. But the fireworks have yet to happen. This is nothing. And I will point out thing Jeff park and I were talking about on on on X yesterday that when you look at the bitcoin volatility index it bottomed on the 30 day. It bottomed on September 28, 2025, so not too long ago. And it bottomed at a level that we hadn't seen actually below the level we saw in. Let's see, get it right. It bottomed at a level that we haven't seen since. Let's get to get it right. The last time we saw levels that low was September of 2023 and we all know what happened after that. That's not surprising. What's weird, if you look at the 60 day volatility, it hit an all time low on September 14th of last month. All time, little, literally never lower than that. Those sorts of things tend to create enormous fuel for a rally if they happen. And that's because bitcoin, unlike he calls it the VINA effect and he goes to the Greek letters. It's an excellent post from. From Jeff. But basically the difference is is in the S P and risk assets, volatility is correlated to downside movement. The higher volatility, the higher the vix, the more likely the SOP goes down. In bitcoin it is slightly the opposite. It's still volatility Will spike up. It spiked up when ftx, you know, crashed the market. Yeah, sure it did, but it really spikes up also on big rallies and that is very, very different. That's because it's an immature asset still. And so as a result, if you're, if you're trying to sell this thing on a technical basis, I think you're picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. But I wouldn't get that excited yet. How's that for a. Kind of try to be a balance about this?

[A]

Exceptional as usual. Anyone else, thoughts on Bitcoin? Price holding $120,000 here. Obviously altcoins also doing well. Let's talk markets. Go ahead, Dan. You guys.

[C]

Yeah, sorry I missed some of you guys in Singapore. I'm still in Singapore. Do you think it's related to the government shut down? I think it's a. Who was it? The guy before the camera said bitcoin is a bond on the collective governance, on the plant criticism. If the entire tax isn't going down, bitcoin is the exit value. Right.

[A]

Hey, Dan, your mic is really, really muffled. I don't know if there's anything you can do to fix it.

[C]

Any better now? Is there any better now or not?

[A]

Yeah, it's a little better.

[C]

Yeah. So, yeah, I'm saying, yeah, when the government shut down. Sorry, first I said, yeah, I'm here in Singapore. Sorry I missed you guys at marquee. Yeah, I think, I think it is a, it is a bond on the failure of government and the US Government currently is failing and that's why it's going up.

[B]

I, I think that, that, that, that, that narrative is a bit overblown. It will be true, I think in the long run, I think it will be true, but I think it's overblown in the short run. First of all, government shut down is political theater. It's a lot of. It happens all the time. The only difference this time is this time it's extremely clear, you know, why it's being shut down. Right. You know, this is it, it and it. And it's really easy to understand. And one side holds all the cards and the other side is it does not. And so it's pretty clear what's going to happen. And I don't know how long it will take, but if it goes on for a super long time, there are many, many people who will be impacted negatively, much more than bitcoin. I mean, I don't believe there's a person on the planet who thinks that the outcome of this government shutdown will be less spending than is currently planned.

[C]

A funny guy is in the US Navy and he was saying we're going to get our payments delayed and it's going to be until the 15th. And what he was saying was, it's okay then because he's kind of pretty good with his financial management. He's like, there's a lot of people in the, in the Navy that need that. They live paycheck to paycheck, so if it gets delayed, they're going to be in trouble.

[B]

So it's absolutely true. And you know, as I said, the human cost is real. I mean, hell, you know, my, my daughter has a deal to fly out of the country to, you know, do. To produce music for her new contract and she needs to get a passport because hers is expiring and she's not going to get a passport until this closed. So, yeah, it's, there's human cost all over the place, things people don't think about. That said, it doesn't change the fact as from an investment point of view, that it's, it's not really a big deal. You know, it's just the US Government is dysfunctional. We know that. It's like, is there anybody who disagrees? I mean, Gary, you want it, you want to go on a rant about the bit your feelings on the, on how dysfunctional the government is. I mean, you know, we know that. Anyway, Ali, actually, you had your hand up first.

[D]

Yeah. Good morning. Or if Gary wants to go ahead, he can jump in as well. But yeah, I was going to add in regards to, of course, the levels that we're seeing right now with Bitcoin and Ethereum specifically. So I was just kind of like tracking the crypto market cycle top indicators and stuff that you can see that it tracks like 30 different signals, like the PI cycle top rainbow chart none of them have triggered yet. So I still think there's room to grow from here. Also with the shutdown, that means it's going to delay those 16 crypto ETFs that were set to approve improve this month. So we're probably going to see these money managers probably allocate more towards what's active and what's available right now before making any decisions to, I guess, allocate more towards anything related to altcoins or anything in that matter. But I don't know if anybody is like, familiar with the SEC and maybe they can clarify this point. But I was kind of looking into seeing how the SEC will be affected during the shutdown and they had like an announcement on their website from the Division of Corporate Finance Actions and they basically said that their work is like extremely limited and they won't be able to accelerate the effectiveness of registrations. You can still make filings, but it doesn't look like approvals or qualifications will happen during.

[A]

Get those ETF approvals we were expecting.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

By the way, Passport, Dave, are you sure? Passport agents agencies are closed, by the way.

[B]

I'm not sure. I hope they're not.

[A]

I think that's one of the things that luckily remains open, but go ahead.

[B]

Yeah. So the SEC will go skeleton staff, essential people only and things like approvals and filings. You can file because the websites will stay open. The people that keep the websites running are essential, but they're not going to take any, any action that requires discretion or commentary or review. Nada. It happened once before and you know, I was, my friend Brett Redfern was running trading in markets at the time and he described all this to me, said listen, we, there's very little that we can do, you know, when this goes on. And you know, I haven't asked Jamie about this who runs trading in markets now, but the truth is there's not that much that they can do and so they're still humans but you know, it's, it's going to slow things down. That said, it doesn't change a damn thing when it comes to Bitcoin and, and you know all these other ETFs. Yeah, that might, that might change something but given how correlated all coins are to Bitcoin and, and I'm, I'm sorry, you know, I, I always get love offending the XRP army and all the others, but frankly these things in the short run trade like, you know, trade like levered Bitcoin. So if you're an asset manager and you have money and you want to allocate it to crypto and not necessarily only bitcoin, what are you going to do? You're going in bitcoin, wait for your vehicles that you would want to do and you'll do the flip when they get approved. That it's just, it's, it's a tales all this time. There's no difference between that and people. Managers typically buy the S and P when they get money and then they, they turn around and they slowly sell S and P and buy the stocks they actually want to buy. So it won't have any effect on, on, on our market, I would imagine where it has an effect is on individual coins and individual approvals. Make sense? Does that make sense to you, Ali?

[D]

Yeah, yeah. Actually, I was also going to add too like, it also mentions that issuers that have near complete filings can request qualification. Now, while some of the operations are normal under the skeleton staff, but as you mentioned, it doesn't seem like there's going to be any progress during the shutdown with approvals or anything like that. So I guess we'll have to wait and see. But yeah, thanks for chiming in.

[B]

Yep, no problem, Dan.

[C]

Sorry, I didn't raise my hand. Apologies.

[B]

We're glitching again. I see Ali's hand up also. So, Scott, what do you see?

[A]

I don't see anything.

[B]

Okay, so.

[A]

Yeah, I don't even see Ali right now. So.

[E]

Guys, every. Everything will be okay because, you know, new helicopter money is coming.

[B]

So.

[C]

Nothing.

[B]

Well, that's right. That. That's a. That's a. That's another one. You know, it's like people talk about tailwinds. I mean, what the hell? Does anyone remember what happened the last time they dropped helicopter money? Because I do. I mean, two things happen.

[E]

It's worth 21, 000 now. Dave, if you put it in bitcoin, it's worth 21.

[B]

Well, but. And if you think people aren't paying attention to that, at least half, if not more. Basically the. The two uses of helicopter money that dominated was leisure and speculation. Those were. They dominated. It wasn't even close. It wasn't to pay, buy food and. And you know, extend do this. It was like all. All the. The cheaper hotels went crazy and the, you know, the. The meme stocks and bitcoin went crazy. So I'm not saying it's going to happen again, but if he actually does that, I mean, wow. I. I don't have an answer. I don't have enough.

[C]

And it's gonna happen again. But he's not not saying it's not gonna happen again.

[A]

Dude, listen, man, all I know is.

[C]

I'm low lane and dumb playing and the printers are gonna burr and the.

[B]

Bitcoin miners are gonna whirl and we're.

[C]

Out here, dude, I'm ready.

[A]

Marshall's been on fire the last two days. Say that again.

[B]

You need to just get. You know, those are great song lyrics. You really need to get a bumper stickers.

[A]

Marshall's gonna go from mining to printing bumper stickers.

[B]

That's awesome. You need to get a song for that.

[F]

You know, guys, this is gonna sound non sequitur, But Nvidia added $2.5 trillion of market cap in less than six months. That is staggering. Two and a half trillion dollars in six months. I don't like this company's got to be overvalued at this point. Right? Like this is like why you, you, you, you. Why?

[B]

Yeah, why man?

[F]

Well, it just seems like it's price for absolute perfection times, you know, the, the factor of 10, four. I mean it's crazy man. Like no time in history has a company increased its market cap two and a half trillion in six months.

[B]

Well, in percentage terms, didn't Cisco do more than that? In, in, in. There was a period in time, I think it was in 99.

[F]

Where's Cisco now?

[B]

Oh no, I understand that this go.

[F]

This Bach thing, this Bach thing. All, all these companies, right. Bach has raised billions of dollars. They've been around, I don't know, 6 years. Their EBITDA is negative, man.

[B]

The reason. So BKKT now I own some. So I have to.

[F]

I will always admit that I'm not picking on it. I'm not picking. No, I, I was looking at some of these fintechs that are pivoting and I'm like, dude, just because you put bitcoin, this feels like hey, let me add.com to my name and, and you get a 30 bump overnight. It just, it's getting a little heated here.

[B]

Yeah.

[F]

In some of the ancillaries it feels.

[B]

To me like far more like, I don't know, it's the best. What's the best analogy? It feels more like January of 2000 than it does like March, April. By the way, the actual highs were hit in August, September of that year. But it was a parabolic blow off top after you got this stuff. I mean it depends. You have to look at individuals. So I'm not invidiable. I held no position in Nvidia. The case there is just the voracious appetite for chips. Power, you know, and basically everything. AI and their position for it and their cash order. What can they do with it and what's their competitive positioning? Cisco had a very temporary competitive position. They, at the time they were the market leader in switches, but they really didn't have anything to protect them. If one believes that Intel, AMD or some newer upstarts are going to dethrone Nvidia for a, you know, GPU and AI chips, then by all means you're right. That was exactly the situation at Cisco. The Cisco was they had gotten big and weren't innovating and got overtaken and they Got absolutely just hammered from that. So, you know, so you have to look at it that way. I am not a stock analyst. There are lots.

[F]

Yeah, but I mean, I mean on Marshall's comments. See, Marshall mentioned miners, right? Now, see, I can see how these miners. Iron Wolf, some of these players are moving because their values were half a billion dollars, man. Like we're talking about Nvidia having to do something absolutely perfect here.

[B]

Oh no.

[F]

Why would I buy Nvidia when I can buy companies that are.

[B]

I'm not, I don't own any. I'm just saying.

[F]

It just seems things are getting crazy, man. I mean you don't add board members to, to a public company and they increase. 23 people are like, oh wow, Bob's joining the board. I'm gonna buy stock there. Like, wow, guys, you know, it feels very 2001ish.

[B]

Well, his name's Mike and we all know it, so you may as well call it what it is. You know, as far as BKKT goes.

[F]

This has happened in other verticals though. I've seen this before. Okay, where, where, you know, you just, you're starting to get announcements here. And the pump, the price is pumping on stuff that's. I've seen this before and it never lasts. It's not the reason to invest in companies. Gary Cardone joins the board of a company is not the reason to buy a company now. Hey, I, I bought 25% of the company and you know, I invested a shitload of my own money into the deal and I'm. That's a different story. But just board members joining things and then they go on. Use X to pump it. People are going to get wrecked here, man. Absolutely wrecked. Because I mean, if you think about it, every fintech on the planet is going to try to replicate this process. Well, we're going to, we're going to have, we're going to have fintechs who are broken and I know this space pretty well.

[B]

Yep.

[F]

Most of these fintechs that are serving big legacy payment companies are not making money.

[B]

Nope.

[F]

The host and they can announce as many. Well, look at xrp. XRP announced a deal, a joint venture with Swift. Dude, these payment guys will do joint ventures with everyone.

[B]

Yep, that's right.

[F]

Zero revenue promises. Zero revenue promises. And, and now Swift announces that they're going to do a deal with consensus. I mean the xrp, like that was the holy grail of their deal.

[B]

Yep.

[F]

So we're just going to see this over and over, these announcements, these kind of, hey, look at this business model.

[B]

You're right. I mean, look, you know, Jeff park had a really interesting post today. I actually added to it. He made the point that, you know, he started, he used the, the word, which I think is funny. But you know, whatever. He talked about the, the dumbing down of America being correlated to meme coin and narrative based investing as opposed to, you know, people thinking things through. I piled on of course, and talked about innumeracy, the fact that people don't do math anymore. I mean, you're right, that, that's absolutely true. I mean, the point is, is you could either look at that and say, well it's going to change eventually and be stubborn, or you can just say, listen, it changes when the narrative changes and you should invest accordingly. I'm not one and I've said this before and Scott has said this before as well. We're, we're on this one together. I am never going to tell people that you can't make money trading memes. And I don't care. XRP in my mind is a meme. I'm sorry, it just is in terms of its price action. I'm sure there's a real technology there, but it is me, right? You know, you have a community here. I mean the chain link, you know, has a meme because they call themselves Marines, the people that hold it. I mean, at the end of the day, if you think the value is great, buy it. I actually think chainlink. The marines have done a terrible job because if you look at the market cap, they've failed relative to XRP people. And you may be right about Nvidia people buying it just based on the narrative saying, well, AI is going to go crazy. So I want to buy it. The point here is you do make money in the long run by buying things that have real value and understanding the narrative shift. So if you look at Mike's two big calls, the iron call, that recall made a lot of sense because you had to understand what they were doing. They were, they were marrying, mining the cloud. And that makes a lot of sense because of the way AI operates and where the synergies they were getting. The BKKT thesis is based on the fact that they have a ton of licenses and the ability to do a bunch of different businesses and a CEO knows what he's doing as opposed to pass management which essentially ground that, that value into the ground, literally. I mean it's trading, it's it, it, it is two equities. The equivalent of a zombie layer one. Right. You know, if you look, it's way off, its all time high.

[A]

It's not even close.

[B]

It looks a lot like, you know, a lot of the coins we know. And every once in a while they find a niche, they wake up and all of a sudden, boom, they come back. And that, that's, that's the question here. Will it do that or not? That's the bet. But anyway, we have multiple hands up. So you don't want to listen to me lawyer and I think you were first.

[G]

Yeah, I mean I had planned. Mine's gonna sound like even more of a non sequitur, so maybe go to Ali and then I'll, I'll do mine.

[D]

Okay, I'll. I was just gonna add to Gary when he was talking about Swift. So they're actually also working with another, uh, crypto project. It's a layer two on Ethereum. They're called Linea or Line A. What, Whatever it is. And yeah, as soon as I kind of made a post like, I was like, is XRP cooked now that Swift is, you know, exploring these other cryptos and chains to do their business on? And right away somebody, some guy from the XRP army was ready to make a response and all that type of stuff. So it does look like Swift is, you know, right now in the testing phases with a lot of these chains. I don't know if XRP is guaranteed to get that footage hold in terms of what they want to do for Swift. But yeah, I was just going to add that. And then for fintech side, so I saw like YC and Coinbase Ventures, they announced like a partnership recently for their venture venture capital arm to fund startups in the fintech space. And I think this is ultimately them gearing up for the 401k money that they're going to have access to when private markets like private equity, venture capital will be able to access for some of this stuff. Back to you.

[G]

Yeah, I mean, did you guys want to respond to that? Because I was going to talk about something else.

[A]

You can talk about something else, it's fine. I can't see any hands, so I'm flying in the dark here. Go ahead.

[G]

Did anyone notice that? I mean, I know Scott noticed because this is how I saw it. Did anyone notice that my favorite website was. And a group of my favorite websites was pumping a shilling a token yesterday?

[A]

I did.

[G]

It was, yeah, I don't know. I did a lot of re. I spent like the whole night researching these websites. They're very good. And, and I don't Know what happened to the price? I think people think it was like tweets and then exit scam. But some pornhub and browsers and a bunch of other sites are tweeting this one token and on Instagram interacting with it and I think that's neat. I know that those guys have been out of.

[A]

Yeah, it's called luck, dude.

[F]

Dude. I think this actually has more application utility. The word utility that's used so often in this industry.

[G]

Well, these guys have been banned from credit card for years.

[A]

So just to give people the, the summary, it's token look.

[B]

L O.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, it's hard not to notice because they tweeted and then I think it was reality kings, some other porn and then pornhub, which obviously gets people's eyes open because we've seen pornhub actually do a deal with XVG in a previous cycle. Right. Wasn't XVG accepted as money for payment on pornhub years ago? But clearly that's not like. I mean, I guess people. You're saying lawyer are implying it was a pump and dump of some sort. Like the just a exit scale. I don't think you, I don't think you. I don't think pornhub tweets at you for a one off. And listen, I know it's not conversation obviously, but yeah, I, I think Gary is right. I think that's hinting towards a bigger thing.

[G]

Yeah, no, I know it's not. And but what I'm saying is looking at the price, it flew up on the tweet and then fell way down below before the tweet. So I think right now what you're seeing is a dip. People thinking who bought the top? Like, oh, that was. That's all we're getting. But they're wearing a badge right now of this mansion. And I saw a glimpse of the guy who paints that mansion and in the back it's orange. So I'm thinking they're going to have like a sex party there. I don't know. But all that seems really cool and pointing towards maybe they may use it as a payment token, which it just so happens like. So it's not just like one of those, you know, they're all owned by Elo and ELO is massive and they can't use credit cards. And so if they are, if they made this token or if they're in this much tied to it, then very possible that they would want to use it as payment. Then you might see other people using it.

[C]

Yeah.

[F]

Can I just Bounce in here because I actually know a little bit about the token and what. It's what pornhub's trying to do.

[H]

So.

[F]

Look, this is really an interesting. Scott, I think you and I had a conversation about this.

[A]

We. We did, yeah. Yes.

[F]

Yeah. But the vast majority of margin made by Visa, MasterCard come from gaming, gambling and adults. This is something they never want to talk about. Okay? They get a. They get a premium lawyer. I can hear your typing. They get a premium for that. What they call brand risk, high risk payment processing. The chain of players involved. Visa will never deal directly with a pornhub. So they have payment processors that specialize in high risk. They set up, you know, in order to play this game, you pay $50,000 a month to Visa. 50 grand a month to MasterCard is a high risk brand. I mean it's basically, hey, you get to pay to pay to play. Now there are absolute billions and billions of dollars. It's one of the largest. I think there's 82 million men on only fans. Just to give you a sign of the addressable market from America, 82 million out of 162 million men are on only fans. Or so they say. So the content providers, the girls, if you will, or the guys, whatever, they're getting screwed because their payments come late from the pornhub guys. Why does it come late? Because the payment processing doesn't settle for at least 180 days. Visa and MasterCard. So there's all these fees all in guarantee. Pornhub's at 20% cost of processing, chargebacks, refunds, disputes, membership fees for the high risk management, all the lawyers, the constant class action suits they fucking get. I mean constantly. And they're always in court with Visa or MasterCard or the FTC. So this use this most certainly the, the. The addressable market for this and the capture to be able to exploit the draconian duopoly. Okay? And that is MasterCard and Visa, who make massive amounts of money on this. Billions and billions and billions of dollars not only from the processing, but both Companies own Visa, MasterCard own Monopoly alert systems where they make billions from preventing the very chargebacks and disputes that pornhub gets in trouble for the pornhub so the world get in trouble for. Okay, the truth is payment processing wasn't set up for off online anonymous transactions between intermediaries. It was never set up for this. Payment processing and credit cards was set up for you and you know, you walking into a grocery store. Not billions of virtual transactions occurring on a daily basis. So I see that like the merchant's going to win, the content provider, the producer of the content is going to win. He gets his money faster, the consumer will win. The, the settlement system will accelerate by a factor of 100. Okay? And there's, there look, these average transactions, $100, there's $20 being paid to Visa, MasterCard that slip right off the system. So it's a fucking massive margin. And once it goes all gaming, gambling and adult will convert to digital.

[A]

Jerry, I brought Dustin up, our mutual friend. I know he probably has some insight here. Dustin, aren't you somehow loosely involved with this?

[I]

Yeah, so a little bit more than loosely. I've been working on this one for the better part of seven months. But really my whole crypto journey has been based on something like this. So I have, I've had many conversations over the years. The, the issue we've always had is that Visa, MasterCard do people dirty. And in order to get adoption we need a full industry push. If you look at the history, the Internet, video streaming, VHS tapes, DVDs were all like, the innovation came from where it all came from, porn and gambling. And if we were ever going to have the kind of broad adoption, it's going to come in a place where like Gary just explained it better, like articulated it better than I can, where everybody has a win because these ridiculous reputational risk fees, the chargeback fees, the, the overcharging Visa and MasterCard. If there's ever been an industry that can use crypto for what it's designed for, for what it uses, well, it's this industry as a whole and it's incredibly well connected. So ALO has under its umbrella is mind boggling what they bring to the table because right, everybody knows Pornhub top 20, top 15 website traffic wise in the world, but they also own Reality Kings and browsers and twisties and mofos and you porn and red tube and like they have so much just adult traffic, it's crazy. But that's not all. They, they also own Pro Biller which does a lot of the processing and billing for the entire industry. And then on top of that they also own Traffic Junkie. Traffic Junkie is ad serve that delivers billions of ads and ad impressions a week. And the way that they've come into the space I think is a model for how we should expect and demand large brands come into our space, which is you, you'll know if, if they wanted to do a cash grab like all the other companies, if this wasn't a Bigger and complex and comprehensive adoption strategy. It would have been easy for them to grab as much money as they want, roll the contract to dress up on pornhub with some, you know, well endowed models like pushing that thing. This thing would have rocketed up into the billions of dollars they could have extracted like so many other brands have done in our space and just left what. What I've seen from this project and what I've been proud to be a part of it is the strategy is so laid out and if, if you want to see some of the Easter eggs for what might be coming as far as integration and utility and what they're planning to do with it, I'd encourage you to look at the terms of [e-mail] and ask yourself since the Trump token whether you've seen anything that complex and if you actually like bury yourself into the legalese. I can tell you that more than four separate white shoe firms worked on the terms of service and had sign off on it. Multiple legal memos were written that, that there are policies in place that you would not see with a typical meme coin. And their plan is very, very aggressive as far as integration and they wanted to make sure that they were going to get a warm reception and they entered the crypto space in a way that was responsible. So incredibly excited for this one because I, I think this leads to like Gary said, once you start this flood away from. It's one of a couple things that's Visa and MasterCard have to adapt and stop with the, the insanity of what they do. They're happy to take these companies money but they just find excuses to charge them more than everybody else. It's insane. They either have to adapt or we see the kind of mass adoption of crypto that we haven't seen in other places. And when you start to think about it, that 25, 2025% that Gary's talking about, that margin, that's where the room is to incentivize. ELO did a market study.

[F]

You like, you like that idea, didn't you Dustin? Dude, it just makes so much. It's so symbiotic. This particular, this was always going to get driven by a super brand like this. And these industries create industries, okay, like whiskey, illegal, immoral stuff. People on the edges, man. We create markets. That's markets are created in the gray. And why? Because the fees are too big. Okay. That the gap. This is the cool thing about crypto. It's going to exploit the margin of the legacy players. They will not be Able to survive in a high transaction low margin market, they take no risk. This is the insane part of this. There is no risk on the card schemes whatsoever and they make 51 and 46% gross operating margins. Companies that are 50 years old. So the opportunity now look, may fail but if they fail because their management didn't know what they were doing. But like to me this is a real use case. I was surprised XRP didn't try to do this Dustin, because this would have been a great distribution model for them.

[A]

You said that to me ages ago Gary.

[F]

Totally man.

[A]

Forgot about that.

[I]

What, what's funny? And I've talked about this like full disclosure, I talked about with this with Gary for months ahead of time. There are other pieces in play here which is what we've been looking for is not just a company that's coming into crypto like I explained to like Cash Grab who sees this as a space where like oh there's a bunch of dumb money floating around that we should go grab some. We've been looking for somebody who's really looking into and has the, the full umbrella necessary to fall on, adopt and integrate into like their digital ecosystem. And listen their total of Internet traffic is measured in full points which is right. It's anywhere from 7 to 15%. And the this market survey that got done the, the percentage of people who use the more than 140 million people unique visits a day inside their network. It's a, it's as much as 85 are not currently crypto native. So this, I, I really, I believe this has the opportunity to be the largest, the last and largest onboarding event to crypto that we'll ever see because that there's no other contained eco digital ecosystem like this one and Alo's got all of the tools and all of the pieces and I, I expect that we're going to be very excited. Just call it a hunch that the tweets from reality kings and browsers and pornhub and Mofos this week were not a one off and that the carefully crafted strategy and plan here is, is set to play out for a long time.

[A]

I don't know but it seems like pornhub wouldn't take a risk like that.

[B]

To pump a token just right.

[A]

It's just dumb. Turns out that turns out that turns out the crypto actually has a really good use case for fast and cheap payments and freedom. Who knew? Crazy. I know. Gary, what were you saying? And I know lawyer. Do you have your hand up?

[F]

No, I was Just. I was totally agreeing with you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Lawyer.

[F]

Yeah.

[G]

I just want for posterity to note that. So, like, this ran to about 130 million last night or yesterday. And when I brought it up just now, it was 57. So let's see where it goes. Because I think this is alpha. I think you could, like, if this. If they successfully implement this, they might find other sin, you know, in the sin industries jumping on board. This could go to the billions. So it was just a 57. Let's see where it goes.

[A]

There's a thing that happens sometimes when I listen to people talk on this show and have no inside baseball, I buy stuff. And I actually bought some. Some just now, so you're welcome for the wick. Yeah, I actually just bought some. That was a really good pitch, I think. Buzz, do we have to move on here?

[H]

I don't know. I mean, I'm really enjoying this pornhub talk, so we can move on.

[A]

But it's funny. I mean, you know, people, like, I think, get triggered by the idea that we're mentioning a pornhub or what it is. But to the very eloquent points Gary and Dustin made. Dustin made. That's where your favorite legacy payment companies are making all of their money. So you could call it whatever you want, but they're gouging people, and there's a better way.

[H]

I agree.

[B]

Where would the Internet have been without porn?

[A]

Mark Yusko literally says that to me every time. He's like, I've made all of my money in my career being on the fringe and being on the side of the criminals or whatever before. Or the side of the vices before. He's like, you know, the.

[B]

Like.

[A]

I'm just saying the, you know, not. Not. He said the devices. It was the term he used. He's like, you know, I was investing in the Internet when everyone said it was just for pornographers. I was vesting in crypto, and everyone just said it was for buying drugs and Silk Road. And here we are, right? The best technologies all start on the fringe.

[B]

I mean, not for nothing, but what do you think that humanoid robots are going to end up getting used for? I mean, come on, you know, nothing.

[A]

Nothing bad. Dave, I don't know what you're talking about. I've seen those movies, though.

[B]

They never.

[A]

Well, they never end well for the human.

[B]

What is. What's funny is being someone who's been happily married for 36 years, I can get away with saying, but the truth is, sex sells. And if you. If you want to make money then you need to understand that because it is, it is, it is just the way it is. Right? You know, people like sex, people like gambling and if. And people like to play games and if you have a use case that's using that. And Gary is so spot on. The alpha he delivered today may be the most that he's ever delivered to this audience. Because the simple fact is the margins of the people who service these industries are insane. And every time in history there's been a situation where technology can eat into those margins. The technology companies that do so perform fabulously well. Now I don't know if this is going to be the one that's going to do it, but I can tell you that the total addressable market is something that you cannot ignore if you are looking to invest in this sector. So yeah, you know, just be, be very dispassionate about it. But that's the them's. The them is the truths.

[H]

I love what Dustin said earlier just about how they could have just extracted from the industry and done just some, some ads on on pornhub or wherever else that would get so much traffic to their coin and just extract from the industry. But seemingly they're doing it the, the right way which I think we can definitely clap our hands together and welcome newcomers to the industry. But before we pivot to our AMA here, Scott if you're good, just going to do a mic check on on. On evdex. Who do we have behind the mic?

[E]

Yeah, hi. Hello guys. My name is Tim. I'm a chief marketing officer in the evdex. Always happy to jump in for a conversation about pornography and how it sells.

[H]

Well, we're going to be pivoting into our AMA here with, with Eve Decks. But before we do, just want to do a disclaimer that Mario's company IBC does marketing, incubation and investing and sponsors on the show are sponsors working with IBC directly. Not necessarily crypto town hall Scott, Dave or myself in particular. But I always like to start these off with an elevator pitch. Why don't you give us an elevator pitch on what Eve Decks is?

[E]

Sure thing. So well evdx. So we're decentralized exchange. We combine smooth level of experience for use mobile first approach. Since we are one of the first DAX which actually has an app on board. We combine traditional user friendly trading terminal with one minute onboarding. We have competitive centralized exchange level of affiliate system and icing on a cake. We're built in point system so every user earns xp just like in a game. So that's it.

[H]

I have the pleasure of having dove into Evidex before, so I want to ask some questions that are a little bit more deeper under the hood. My first one here is that in a non custodial or perp stack, where do you think AI should live? Is it signals, execution, risk controls? And what is the approach that you guys are taking in regards to AI here?

[E]

Well, actually I'm using AI for trading on daily basis myself, so. So I'm really happy to see such a big surge of an interest in AI in the market. I see the main benefit of AI in depth market analysis and risk level alerts. Algorithms can quickly assess statistical deviations, volumes, volatility, but order execution for sure must remain transparent and controllable by the user.

[H]

How can venues prove bot safety without exposing edge in this environment?

[E]

Well in fact, users get worried when they hear the word bot because they don't know what's going on behind the scenes. So our job here is as a platforms is to ease that tension without giving away our intellectual property. The most honest thing is always numbers. So that's why we openly show the entire stack of statistics, profitability, history, maximum drawdowns and the radio of profitable and unprofitable trades for sure. So exchanges can foster trust by publishing variables, performance metrics like win loss radius, historical ROI and maximum drawdowns without revealing the code. So regular audits of smart contracts and the algorithmic logic combined with third party security reviews show that bots operate as advertised. So even without revealing the code, such data allows you to evaluate the quality of algorithm's performance.

[H]

So in this environment, like what decisions do you think must remain human to keep a safe trading environment for everyone?

[E]

Human judgment is essential for setting risk appetite, choosing strategic goals, deciding when to intervene. So while AI can recommend leverage levels or entry points, traders should always determine how much capital to allocate and whether to browse automated strategies in response to news events or, I don't know, personal circumstances.

[H]

So how do you prevent a crowded trade? Like in this sort of age of AI? Like if everyone is feeding an LLM the same signal and making a trade based on that, how do you prevent that crowded trade and the cascade risk?

[E]

Well, to mitigate this kind of risk, you need to diversify your strategies and implement like venue level safeguards, encouraging a range of algorithmic models, momentum, mean reversion, arbitrage, reduce her behavior. Our trading engine tracks market volatility in real time and automatically adjusts things like maintains margins, finding rates and position limits. So when volatility rise it lowers available leverage and increases volume margin requirements. To help prevent large scale liquidations. We also use a hybrid setup fast off chain order book combines with on chain settlement or on our Evantum L3 network. This keeps spreads tight but gives us the option to post matching a circuit breaker if the market moves too sharply. On top of that, we work closely with market makers and offer fees fee rebates to liquidity providers. A deeper order book helps us stabilize prices when traders exit at once and our fleet program actually attracts city new capital instead of short time speculation.

[H]

Appreciate that. And then for people who are tuning in so just a couple reminders here. So we have the evidex account up here in a speaker spot. It's the square logo, the beautiful purple logo here. Click on their account. I've also put a post of theirs up into the next about their farming season. So make sure that you're following official links. Click one of those if you're looking to learn more about evidex, give them a follow and follow the official links directly in their bio that you'll see on their their profile. But but the goal here right is is mass adoption. What is the first trust anchor that you'd give new users of AI driven trading?

[E]

Well, the main thing that builds trust is controlling openness. Users should always keep their own private keys and know the exchange that exchange can't block or take their money. For beginners it's also important to have a simple interface, demo mode and guides so they can learn and test without losing money. When people see the platform is safe, transparent and helpful, they feel confident. Well while using AI trading we actually we're now launching AI Auto Trading. That's a smart tool that adjusts to the market and lets users choose choose the risk level and trade speed. It works with PTC USD and if USD perpetuals and fits both pros and beginners who want trading to run, you know, automatically.

[H]

So so this is what I want to dive into. Let's kind of picture the user journey for for a new user signing up with the AI automated trading trading strategy. What's that user journey look like for them?

[E]

Well they should just first of all go through onboarding process, open our web interface and there for from the left top corner you will see the two buttons and one of them says AI Boat trading. That's it. So just getting you will see more than 50 automated strategies which you are very welcome to use. So it's easy like that.

[H]

What are your future plans for integrating Maybe any other AI tools as you guys scale.

[E]

We not disclosure this thing at the moment. So we have a number of different AI tools which we implement at this very moment. But can't, can't open it right now.

[B]

Sorry.

[H]

No problem at all. We have the audience here right now so there's about 3, 900 people who are tuning in. If they're liking what they're hearing about Evadex, what's your call to action for these folks? What can they do and how can they help out?

[E]

That's a super easy interface which combines text level of experience with DAX security so your phones are always safe while you're trading with us and we have a lot of peers to a lot of different instruments to use. So please guys, you're very welcome to try it.

[H]

The pinned post that I put up into the Nest as well. What I noticed here is the double XP season ends on October 6th. So right now people are earning double the amount of XP for every order on your exchange. Is that correct?

[E]

Yes, absolutely. So while you trade on Avidox you go through gamification process and so far as far as you go you earn XP points and right now it's doubled. So it will bring a future benefits when we will announce our token and go to the if token TGE Wonderful.

[H]

Anything to share in terms of alpha for TGE token launch, anything like that?

[E]

Well there are a lot of work which our team doing behind the scenes right now so we was very surprised that our tokenomics somehow reached the market. But let's say that we have plans for TGE upcoming but cannot disclose anything about it right now.

[H]

No problem. What I took away from that is TGE upcoming. I'll put the words in your mouth for you but yeah I really appreciate you joining. Just another call out to the audience. The Evidex account here is in a speaker spot. Give them a follow follow official links from their bio. There's obviously also the post up in the nest about their farming season. If you do have any additional questions or anything like that about evadex, the comments section is open. So I assume their team will be going through all the comments after the show and trying to get back to to you. It's a great way to get in touch with them. Any final words as we wrap up here?

[E]

Yeah guys thank you so much for inviting us here. So it's a pleasure to be and you're very welcome to use our platform.

[H]

Thank you very much for joining us and for people who are tuning in we will be back live again on Monday. Forgot it was Friday, almost said. Tomorrow at 10:15am Eastern Time, Dave and Scott will be kicking it up everything that happened over the weekend and let everybody know what the alpha is. So until then everyone have a great weekend. Celebrate bitcoin being over 120k bnb almost 1150 right now. That's pretty cool. But everyone have a great weekend. Touch some grass and we'll be back again Monday morning 10:15am Eastern time. Take care.